Committee fast-tracks Fall River's proposed synthetic drugs ban

City officials — including the public health director, police chief, EMS director, legal counsel and an area tobacco control director — put on a public full-court press to ban disguised synthetic drugs at the local level for their destructive properties.

City officials — including the public health director, police chief, EMS director, legal counsel and an area tobacco control director — put on a public full-court press to ban disguised synthetic drugs at the local level for their destructive properties.

Their hourlong slide show and testimony had barely ended Tuesday night when the Committee on Ordinances and Legislation acted on the proposal to make sale and possession of chemically altered “bath salts” and “synthetic marijuana” illegal with enforcement by city police.

“I really believe this is something we have to act on immediately,” Councilor Raymond Mitchell said. “I have no doubt in my mind we have to pass some kind of ordinance to get these off of the store shelves.’

The “poisons” that Mayor Will Flanagan and these top officials described earlier this month to Herald News editorial staff are dangerous drugs sold as potpourri, incense and other seemingly innocuous items in mom-and-pop convenience stores — but causing violent, aggressive behavior, paranoia, hallucinations, seizures and probable deaths in cases of the worst strains of treated bath salts, officials reiterated to the council committee.

On a series of 4-0 votes, they recommended the ordinance be expedited for passage at a special City Council meeting. The local law would carry a maximum $300 fine with sanctions for stores selling the product that could impact food, tobacco and liquor licenses.

“We have no idea what the long-term effects of bath salts are,” said Dr. Henry Vaillancourt, director of public health and human services.

Calling it “unconscionable” stores are selling these products to teenagers and others — with no age restrictions — Vaillancourt added, “You’re not going to put that in gallons of water in your bath tub.”

Corporation Counsel Elizabeth Sousa told councilors their aim was to clamp down first and foremost on stores selling products that have become a national scourge, resulting in bans of one or both by 46 states — Massachusetts’ ban on bath salts earlier this month will go into effect Jan. 1 — and both products under federal law in July.

Police Chief Daniel Racine said his department has received “15 calls for bath salts overdoses” in the past two months, and emphasized that in Massachusetts, at this time, “the stores are selling the drug legally.”

“We have no authority” as a local police department, Racine said, “to enforce any statute” to combat these synthetic drugs.

That’s because local law enforcement lacks jurisdiction over federal laws, and the more limited state law won’t take effect for four months.

The most poignant part of their presentation was Sousa’s reading of a letter a “mother of a drug addict” emailed to Flanagan a week ago.

“I have a 37-year-old son who is addicted to bath salts,” she began. Four times in the past five months she said she’s been with that son to court.

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“Going to court and speaking to a judge about my son was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But it was more important to me that I keep my son safe and alive,” the unidentified woman wrote.

She also related, in the letter Sousa read and shared a copy of, that her son has two sons, lost his right to see them years ago, and also lost his job, sold his truck for drug money and has seen six friends die from drug use.

She said she has not been allowed to see her grandsons in four years despite trying to keep them “out of harm’s way” from their father.

“The reason I am writing is because I am so passionate about getting this horrible drug off the store shelves. I know firsthand what a horrible drug this is. I know how it ruins lives, strips you of your morals, money, family and life in general,” the woman wrote, offering her advice and aid to this cause.

Among a host of data shared, John Duclois, director of the Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services, showed a graph from the nearly three-month period through last Friday of “violent versus nonviolent incidents,” comparing abuses of alcohol and prescription drugs, heroin and treated bath salts.

EMS crews recorded 10 percent of heroin users they treated acted violently, 25 percent of those using alcohol and prescription drugs showed violence and about 50 percent of those using bath salts were violent, Duclois said.

Marilyn Edge, SouthCoast regional director of tobacco control, whose agency monitors tobacco and substance abuse issues, including retail sales, said she believes fewer than the 18 stores she and city police found selling these products three weeks ago in the open are continuing such sales.

But she warned, “We have no illusions that this has gone away because of the publicity.”

Until the city passes the ban, stores will sell it behind the scenes, Edge said, adding, “Several store owners told me once the law goes through we would have no problem (with retail sales). If nobody can sell it, they will stop selling it.”